MES - Sausage Question

No pics to post, as the wife took both digital cameras out of town with her for the weekend somehow, but...

Stuffed a 10# batch of Spicy German sausage links last night in some 35mm casings. Ended up making 6 full links, and 2 half links.

So I put some S-hooks on the top rack of the MES, and hung the 8 links from them. Spaced out so that none were touching, or if they spun to touch, very little surface would have been touching.

Heated at 140F with no smoke on for about 30min to dry out the casings a bit and get them tacky. Then bumped MES up to 165F and loaded up with pecan chips and a few hickory chips. Let it smoke away for about 3hrs. Internal temp was at 132F at that point. Raised set point a bit and let it keep going for another 45min or so till bed time. Pulled at 136F internal or so.

These have cure in them and will receive a final smoke/cook in the other smoker prior to eating. The will be vac sealed and frozen for later.

Top vent was open about 1/2 or 2/3 of the way for the first 3hrs. Nice blue smoke coming out the top. Added more chips a couple times during smoke to keep the blue line going.

So the issue...

When I pulled the links, several had one side that was nicely smoked, other sides were kinda pinkish, but nothing like a nice heavy smoke. Some links only got nice n smoky near the top 1/3 or so.

I agree as well. Were they hanging or laying on a grill. If they were laying on the grill, maybe try hanging them next time. Get yourself some "S" hooks from hardware store, put in the top rack into smoker, hang "S" hooks on rack, and hang sausage on "S" hooks. Your will find that the links will cross and touch eachother at the bottom. It's ok, halfway through the smoke just switch them around. Or, stick a toothpick into both pieces towards the bottom of the sausage to keep the links seperated.

I ran into the same problem the first time I smoked some kielbasa.
The next 2 times I cold smoked the kielbasa and they were smoked on both sides. I got one of the cold smoke generators from Porky Pa's. Works great with both the sausage and cheese I've smoked, but a bit of a pain in the *** to clean the tar after using it.
The only drawback was that it took about 20 hours total to cold smoke the sausage. There is no heat whatsoever with this method, give it a try.